


Both Pavlov and the bell

by cicak



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Time, Last Time, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:19:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time they had sex it was debatable that it was Sherlock Holmes at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Pavlov and the bell

_Prelude_

Depending on the time of day Gregory Lestrade’s opinion of ‘Viral Internet Sensation Sherlock Holmes’ could be anywhere from the mild sputtering of  ‘insufferable git’ to the slightly harder ‘words unspeakable in front of small children’ to ‘words unspeakable to hardened sailors’.

He holds a secret in his head darker than anything in the cells, that he knows that he and Sherlock are not that different.

 

* * *

 

_First_

The first time Sherlock Holmes solved a crime for him, it was 5AM on a Sunday morning. Greg had been up 45 hours and could feel with every minute passed the press of the extra paperwork for violating the European Working Time Directive. There was a club kid, pretty and decked out in enough glow sticks and LEDs to constitute dealing if they were contraband, all matching the shocking red bob of her hair as she lay in the gutter. The warehouse was being used for a rave, and the music that continued to thud out built to a thundering, orgasmic crescendo despite all the people involved shivering on the pavement in their nowt-but-fors.

Unlike his later flair when solving crimes, Sherlock Holmes, skinny and obviously, in hindsight, so fucked off his face his entire personality had been erased, calmly pointed out with a sweet helpfulness Greg now knows to never, ever trust, that the corpse had been moved from the alley to outside the club. They knew this, but he should not have.

“Its not the boyfriend!” Sherlock Holmes yells, as the protesting boyfriend is crammed into the back of the van. Sherlock himself is pressed into a police car, on the unofficial charge of being damn suspicious, and gives a statement that turns out to be absolutely right on the money – the ex, a man with a barrel of tick-box character flaws - former military, dealer of legal highs, cocky and clever  - the kind always careful to never break the law, officer. An ugly charmer with a successful website and an ugly flat.

Sherlock’s alibi is tighter than a nervous virgin, as his old Sergeant would say. Another man in the club was ‘with’ Mr Holmes the entire time and so Greg gives him a business card as he is discharged, and later finds one in his pocket. The stock is cheap and there’s a generic advert on the back but it reads simply ‘Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.’ There’s a number scrawled under his name in blue fountain pen ink, deliberately smudged with a thumbprint. ‘For keeps’, it says underneath, the ink bone dry.

He clocks off officially at 47 hours, and sleeps that over again.

 

* * *

 

_Penultimate_

The second to last time they had sex was not long after the Queen’s speech.

The bitter boiling inevitability had been building since his wife’s infidelity had been laid out so brusquely, as a casual throwaway dart of an insult thrown straight into the bulls-eye, and then confirmed so blithely by her when he came home drunk on punch and laid it all out the way Sherlock did. Hearing his voice deepen, the drawl absolutely down to the alcohol and not an echo of the accuser, he twisted his own knife, accusing, throwing promises at a thousand words a minute. She blames the work, the emotional distance, the previously confessed affairs at the top of her lungs. She stops mid sentence her face suddenly white, and he whirls around and sees the kids’ faces peering through the bannister, their faces tiny commedia masks of horror.

He wanted to go back there right then, back to 221B and punch Sherlock Holmes in his stupid nose and watch him bleed.

She leaves with the kids and he spends the next couple of days layering cheap whisky over stomach acid, bile and regret, and Christmas day at work for want of anything better to do, face sore from the tight smiles from pretending that he was on the rota. He spent the day trying to burn through emails and paperwork when he isn’t staring at the wall trying to contain the tsunami of his hangover.

He watches the Queen’s speech with the other poor sods before the evening shift comes on, then breathalyses himself to be sure that the previous night wasn’t still haunting his veins and clocks off.

The winter is mild, predictably even the weather can’t be fucked to behave appropriately these days. He is in a mood that is half reckless and half still bloody furious and consumed by all of it, so consumed by all of that he barely registers his surroundings until they’re solid and familiar. His car takes him to the multi-storey by Baker Street. His feet take him to 221. His hands knock on the door. His mouth says, “This isn’t a thing. This isn’t anything. Christ, Sherlock, why do you have to be right? Why couldn’t you be wrong about this, one of your few missed things, your little somethings…’

The sun has given up and so technically, its Christmas day night and he’s there, a broken man with a crumpled face, and he’s being kissed, inexpertly kissed, by Sherlock Holmes, under some scraggly mistletoe and he can almost imagine it tastes of regret.

“John is away” is all Sherlock says to him, all he has to say really to drag him up the flight of stairs to the sofa. Sherlock peels the hangover away from him, opens him up emotionally, and exposes the raw edges of pain and the colicky feeling of panic that sits like a blanket over everything. He sucks wet and long on his neck, goes limp in the joints and allows Greg to pick him up like he’s made of nothing but the gossamer feeling of a bad idea. He wraps long legs round Greg’s hips as they move through the kitchen to where Sherlock’s room is. Greg knows all the secret places of the room, is intimate with the loose floorboards and tell-tale scratches on the skirting board and the little box hidden in the back of a drawer that was home to a keepsake he’ll never breathe that he’s found, but the room is different when you enter with the invitation of its owner wrapped around your body. Sherlock is giving and fluid, he arches into every minor touch and whimpers to the back of the theatre at every sensation. And by comparison Greg is brutal. A bit, anyway, not really, but he uses his weight and his training to subdue him further, to push him, not sure what he wants Sherlock to do, what he would do if Sherlock wasn’t nearly screaming with anticipation and how much he wants it. Throws him on the bed and hears Sherlock purr, sees him wriggle and pins him with elbows and knees while he strips himself, then wrestles Sherlock out of his striped dressing gown, thinking hysterically of it being like unpeeling a dandy banana, and then struggles out of his sorry Christmas clothes until they are both naked, and its December and its freezing, no heat in the flat, not even from the obvious bowels of hell he’s descending into.

Sherlock is perfectly bendy and manages to suck Lestrade’s cock down to the root while Greg pistons two slick fingers obscenely in Sherlock’s arse, then Sherlock moans like a tart and takes it bent almost in half. He finds a single blue foil wrapped condom in Sherlock’s bedside drawer next to the lube and breaks the tension long enough to get it on, too sober for the silence not to get to him, but Sherlock is nuzzling his stomach and sprawling invitingly with his arse in the air that he gets it back and fucks short and hard into his body as Sherlock bucks and grips the sheets and goddamn bites the pillow like he’s a bad joke told by someone’s out-of-touch Dad.

Its only after he feels the sucker punch of orgasm and feels Sherlock’s body grip and ride him through its own that he realises how odd this is.

Sherlock has collapsed into a reasonable impersonation of sleep, and so Greg lets himself out, and they never speak of it again. Much like the previous time.

 

* * *

 

_Second_

The second case Sherlock Holmes turns up on is given again to serendipity of London’s criminal classes.

“DI Lestrade, isn’t it? You’ll vouch for me. From the Bronte Case? You had me arrested?”

The constable looks to me. “Yes well, getting in a punch-up isn’t usually the habit of a trustworthy sort now, is it.”

“He punched me in the nose. I was protecting my investment.”

In all the time he and Sherlock have been falling out of crime scenes and into bed, Sherlock never asked Greg for anything, not even his name. Sherlock treats every day like training for the great deduction Olympics, where getting things just ever so wrong is worth it, operating under the expectation he’ll be corrected if he’s got something significantly wrong. A confidence interval confidence artist.

 

* * *

 

_Intermission_

Contrary to what Sherlock believes, the best and brightest of the London constabulary are perfectly able to solve the majority of their cases without him. Lateral thinking is a skill prized and nurtured by the modern police force as much as keeping a cool head and exuding quiet authority at all strata of society is. In the cases where they do need him, but there’s a reason why Sherlock would make a terrible police officer and why Greg is considered to be a good one.

Sherlock pushes at people’s mental pressure points, pulling the triggers of their personal traumas, a mental torture so efficient and effective that people roll over and give in to him, then watch him flounce off through their tears and the extra 6 sessions of CBT the letter from the Met to their GP recommends.

As far as trauma goes, Sherlock Holmes should be listed in the Police Guidance alongside the Tasers, but just below the firearms, a non-lethal force, but brutal all the same. A public relations nightmare they have because its easier than the alternative.

Sherlock Holmes sets himself a sort of golf handicap when talking to people – he has to get as much as possible before he asks a single probative question. He shoves them onto the back foot with nothing more than trickery, moulding the world to his expectations and shrugging off the corners where they don’t fit.

There are times when Greg can feel it affecting even him, slipping into ‘Lestrade’, the pantomime one-named crime-dealer Sherlock Holmes calls the way he used to call his other dealers, the ones he refuses to give up the names and addresses for. Proof that while the police are his current favourite distraction, the street remains a temptation not fully resisted, like a bathroom window left ajar.

 

* * *

 

_First_

The first time they had sex it was debatable that it was Sherlock Holmes at all.

Busy 21st century working people do their dating in stolen time - their lunch hour or at midnight after a shift that has left you too wired to sleep but too practical to go out when there’s another shift a sleep and a sandwich away. Internet dating is the perfectly legitimate hobby of the busy flirt.

The man who turns up for the date, who he had been sneaking wonderful flirty messages at unsocial hours for two weeks now is called Simon and he is wearing Sherlock Holmes’ face like a delicate mask. The single picture on his profile was of a short-haired brunette caught mid laugh against the background of a quite shabby pub and so its understandable Greg did not see this coming. He is shocked for a good minute, but Sherlock does not break character and Simon Maturin is calm and coolly confused at his date’s stunned goldfish look for the full sixty seconds.

It is a testament to Sherlock’s acting ability that he doesn’t break character all night, and that Simon is charming and seductive, so much so that Greg doesn’t feel like he’s talking to Sherlock at all. It’s a good date, when all’s said and done, but not so much so that he pushes it, (because it is Sherlock, however good the mask) and gets ‘Simon’ into his house for coffee, and then kisses the Arabica from his mouth when they’re done eyefucking over the rims of chipped mugs.

Greg read a book once that said the honey traps in the cold war were so well trained they would never betray their foreign habits even when in the throws of passion. He and Simon-Sherlock have awkward, sticky, sex on his kitchen cabinets and every moan, every touch, ever muttered word sounds nothing at all like the regular Sherlock Holmes. It feels exactly like bad one night stand sex, Greg apologising by reflex and Simon coming too quickly down the inside of his sleeve, then awkwardly tossing Greg off against the fake marble countertops. Simon lets himself out, platitudes spilling from his lips in the same odd, non-Sherlock voice he’d had on all night, even when gasping Greg’s name too loudly. The number he programs into Greg’s phone is to a hot twinks phone sex line, not that he’d ever admit to ringing it. Overall it feels like he fell into a parallel universe, and when Sherlock turns up at the next crime scene, hovering the other side of the tape fucking politely for once, Greg sends an officer to speak to him first. The officer returns holding a cup of lukewarm coffee in a polystyrene cup with a message on it in blue biro – “the blue paint is an anomaly”

The next dating site message he sends turns out to be to the woman who becomes his wife.

 

* * *

 

_Penultimate_

He and the wife go away, more because they’d booked the holiday than as a last ditch attempt at saving the relationship. He barely sees her the time they’re away, and he gets back to find divorce papers waiting for him on his desk. Also waiting for him is a man that stinks of the civil service wearing a three-piece suit more archaic than fashionable and a face that’s receding at both chin and hairline like his head is trying to get away from his features. It’s a nasty thing to think, but when the man introduces him as another Holmes, Greg doesn’t particularly care. He recognises Sherlock’s old nose though, and has to stifle the grin he holds himself.

 

* * *

 

_Intermission_

He ends up ‘doing a favour’ for Mycroft Holmes because he asked nicely, which takes him to Devon. He manages to drink half of a rather nice pint before it all goes to hell.

In hindsight it was so stupid, because of course Sherlock knows he’s called Greg of all things. He’s stolen more ID badges, business cards and wallets than Greg has ever been able to reasonably afford to replace, and wouldn’t put Sherlock past having a copy of his birth certificate, passport, driving licence and up to date utility bill stashed away in case of a spot of identity fraud was needed in the line of his adopted duty. It’s probably the handicap, deleted in a fit of pique or boredom and desire to deduce Lestrade’s first name from what he can tell about him, his parents or his year of birth. How he statistically would be called Michael or Richard or Norman over Gregory, but there’s the French influence to factor in, oh yes, whip out the blackberry and within 30 seconds it’d be over, depending on whether he’s managed to get a decent 3G connection out here in the sticks.

 

* * *

 

_Last_

Greg returns from one of a long line of meetings that are designed to make his life horrible to find the voicemail icon blinking obnoxiously on his phone, but then the phone rings in his hand with the news of Sherlock’s literal fall from grace and it falls to the bottom of the pile in the cacophony of screaming press, pints of blood and the impossible angle of a broken body. He spends most of the day holding up the drooping left side of John while Mrs Hudson holds up the right, identifying the body when John breaks down again. John refuses to wash his hands and instead stares mutely at the smudges on his fingers and the dark caked blood under his nails, and when he’s brought back to Baker Street he just sits slumped in his chair. Mrs Hudson says she’ll look after him, and there are uniforms on the doorstep and tiredness deep in his bones, so he goes home.

Its only when the flashing light refuses to turn off after he’s collapsed into bed that he remembers the voicemail. He heaves himself out to grab the phone off its charger and falls back down onto the covers.

No one leaves voicemail anymore, never really very secure and with the scandal, everyone follows – followed – Sherlock and prefers to text these days. So it takes him a few moments to remember how to access it before the cool voice of the automated guide says, “You have one new message and one saved message. Press one for new messages, two for saved messages…”

“Lestrade. Sherlock. I’m about to do something you’d think was very, very stupid, but isn’t that what you always think of me?

Just, look after John. And…yourself. I’m sorry about your wife, and your career, and…and your kitchen table, and anything else I’ve ruined. There’s a box in my wardrobe you should have. And when they do my autopsy, well, I won’t mind if you corroborate their findings, but well…it’d probably be better for the investigation if you don’t.

I’m sorry Greg. I wish it could have been different. I wish I could have said something different.”

“End of message. Press one to listen again, two to save the message, three to delete the message.”

It’s another hour before he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

_Last_

The only time Sherlock came to him was two days before his death, or as its known in the trade, at the worst fucking possible time.

The thing is that Lestrade – and oh, in this case he is Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes’ puppet policeman, the constable in the Punch and Judy show – knows that the whole situation is falling apart the moment he sees the silhouette of his puppet master in his lounge. He can see the whole thing coming apart because Sally is right, there shouldn’t be a way for him to do the things he does, and now he’s bringing Greg Lestrade’s life down around his ears.

He’s in Sherlock’s face with a few long strides, and Sherlock’s reply is unreadable, a bit broken in the half-light. He kisses Greg though, kisses him like it’s a one time deal, leans in with his whole body and presses against all his good spots at once and when Greg rips his head away leans in towards him, eyes closed, looking beautiful and vulnerable. So Greg kisses him this time, gives into it, puts his hands under the coat against warm cotton and lets himself lose his head in this ridiculous, life ruining man.

Kisses the sounds from the words.

 

* * *

 

_Coda_

It takes him a long time to read the full report of Sherlock’s suicide. In among the interminable disciplinary hearings and the unpaid leave that eats a hole in his already constrained budget post-divorce it just never comes up, and he felt it wouldn’t be professional to go pressing his and his colleagues sores by getting it out of the archive. Yet, it comes across his desk many months after everything, tangentially related to a kidnapping that turns out not to be connected, but when Sherlock Holmes is not yet just an embarrassment on the records of many a senior officer and a question in end-of-the-year quizzes, its important to check all the leads. He flicks through casually, reading statements and reports, sees his own signature many times, but its the autopsy report where he pauses. Its short, serviceable, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of a man whose blood drenched the pavement; nothing out of the ordinary, just injuries consistent with falling off a bloody building. But no, look closer, just one line there, something that sticks out. Something you don’t normally see on coronary reports of suicides, let alone male suicides.

‘…subject had no sign of recent sexual activity…’.

Greg throws his head back and laughs. ‘Oh, you jammy bugger, Sherlock Holmes.’

**Author's Note:**

> So my personal favourite head canon is that Sherlock switched to IV cocaine after destroying his nose with all the cocaine use, and that’s why he and Mycroft have such different snozzes. 
> 
> http://cicaklah.tumblr.com


End file.
